As soon as Regulation assumes independence of the operator who manages the essential infrastructure, ex ante conditions of such independence must be met.

Europe doesn't require legal autonomy of the essential infrastructure manager, probably because such autonomy, it would be both too ask the Policy, which may want more integrated organizations as soon as public transportation is a mix of public policies and that to public funds are used. But it would also be too little to ask the Policy because no matter the legal autonomy, the key is the real independence of the manager, that is under the control of the Regulator.

The Competition Authority in its opinion of 4 October 2013 had expressed reluctance towards the bill, to the influence that such corporate organization offers to the public operator, to the detriment of its competitors and the opening of the railway sector to competition.

The Competition Authority issues its opinion as a real essay on what should be the Regulation of the railway sector through the "governance" of the network manager. Indeed, the first part of the opinion relates to "the independent management of railway infrastructure" while the second focuses on the integration of railway network in the public group built par the law. The third part of this Opinion draws conclusions to measure whether we can consider that the Autorité de Régulation des Activités Ferroviaires (French Regulatory Authority of Railways Activities) shall have the capacity to ensure this independence by governance or not.

This review, in its construction itself, demonstrates the dialectic between Regulation and Governance (I), which is an observation and stresses the role of the regulator in the effectiveness of governance (II), which is more a question .

In Belgium, the Flemish Region had adopted the Decree of 23 December 2010 to exemp those providing electricity with a renewable source to pay the rate of injection into the electricity transmission network. The Region stated that it was not an act tariff, thus falling under its jurisdiction. The decree, attacked by the energy regulator before the Belgium Constitutional Court, was canceled by the latter in a ruling dated July 12, 2012, because it is an act of pricing, under the only federal competence.

In France, the Minister of Ecology has issued an Order to facilitate the
purchase of electricity generated by wind. The text is being challenged
before the "Conseil d’Etat" (State Council) for illegality, in that it
constitutes state aid. The State Council considers the matter serious
enough to suspend the proceeding and seized the Court of Justice of the
European Union of a preliminary question on 15 May 2012.

In The Journal of Regulation the summaries’ translation are done by the Editors and not by the authors

ENGLISH

On November 28, 2011, the French Council of State issued a summary judgment suspending the Government price freeze on household natural gas prices because the ‘price scissors’ effect it had was harming competition, and because no superior legal norm justified the freeze.

The Commission de Régulation de l’Energie (CRE — French energy regulator) published an opinion “regarding the draft executive order regarding the regulated tariffs for natural gas publicly distributed by GDF Suez.” This non-binding opinion was published on September 29, 2011, and claims that it is not acceptable for the Government to leave natural gas prices unchanged because these prices do not cover GDF Suez’s costs and symmetrically prevent newcomers from competing with it.

Main information

The Italian upper administrative court (“Consiglio di Stato”) ruled that the Autorità per le garanzie nelle comunicazioni (“AgCom” – the Italian Regulatory Authority for electronic communications) is not bound to provide a rigorous justification when issuing decisions not compliant with European Commission’s comments.
This judgment is of general interest since, on the basis of a formalistic reasoning, it does not pay adequate attention to the role played by the European Commission in electronic communications’ regulatory proceedings at national level.
Under the European regulatory framework (and the multilevel governance system established therein), comments from the European Commission are the main pillar of the horizontal coordination system between the European level and the national level, aimed at creating a competitive common market for electronic communications.